Happy Birthday!!!...yesterday

For the first and only time ever in her life, Jane turned one yesterday. Hooray! We're planning the big family party for Saturday, but we did have a small celebration with just the three of us.

We started the evening off with the birthday dinner: pytte i panne. It's a Norwegian dish Chris learned on his mission that basically amounts to a one-pan breakfast. Potatoes, ham, eggs, onion, garlic, cheese...whatever sounds good. Generally, we follow the "birthday person gets to choose the meal" tradition. Since Jane can't talk, she had to settle for what was already on the menu. She didn't seem to mind too much, though.



After dinner, opening of gifts commenced. We actually bought Jane a new coat for her birthday, but we gave it to her early. It was way way way too cold for her to be wearing her old coat that is too small and is more of a jacket than a coat anyway. So, she's been wearing that gift all week. Luckily, she's too little to have a clue.

It took her a while to realize that the presents were meant to be opened, so she spent a while just waving them around.




Once again, she would only tear off a small piece of wrapping paper at a time and hand it to me before tearing off any more. At one point, I had dropped a piece on the floor without noticing. Jane immediately stopped unwrapping and pointed at the fallen piece, saying "uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh" until I picked it up. Then she went right back to opening the present like nothing had happened.



We gave her a coloring book with Crayola Twistables crayons. They are crayons, but they are inside a plastic case that makes them basically the same as a marker, but it's a crayon. They are working really, really well. They don't break as easily as colored pencils and Jane isn't interested at all in eating them like she does normal crayons. She played with them for quite awhile, and she was actually coloring in the book.





I'll post a full compliment of party pictures after the big shebang on Saturday.

In other news, Jane is a full-blown stepper. She's not really walking yet, but she can take two or three steps before she falls over. Often, she'll take her three steps, sit down, then clap. I guess because we kept getting excited when she walked, she now thinks that any step is worthy of a clap. Hopefully soon we'll pass the three-step record. I hear applause in the future...